The Samuel Gray Society
The Samuel Gray Society consists of a fictional, educational foundation whose mission is to preserve the culture of eighteenth-century colonial America through the life and legacy of Samuel Gray, the first man killed in the Boston Massacre. Currently, the artist is the founder, president, and sole member of this organization. Almost nothing is known about the life of Samuel Gray, and as his self-appointed biographer, the artist intends to insert his narrative where none currently exists, utilizing anthropological and archaeological methodology to honestly depict and critique the process of historical interpretation.
This autofictional project is inspired, in part, by the increasing level of scholarship and activity in the field of Micro-history, paired with an increasing level of established journalistic bias, assumption and partisan subjectivity embedded in modern media. My strategies utilize anthropological and archaeological methodology, appropriate common research modalities and present visual archives to selectively insert particular and eccentric information into a dialogue based on the discrepancies between truth and myth concerning our past and present.
The Samuel Gray Society Project consists of the creation of an educational foundation whose mission is to preserve the people and culture of 18th century Colonial America through the life and legacy of Samuel Gray, the first man killed in the Boston Massacre. Currently, I am the founder, president and sole member of this organization.
Almost nothing is known about the life of Samuel Gray, and as his self-appointed biographer, I intend to insert my narrative where none currently exists. In this way, his story is mine to fabricate--a ripe mixture of historical fact and tenuous hypothesis, which, in many ways, is an honest depiction of the process of historical interpretation.
This project involves two significant undertakings. The first, following the creation of the Sam Gray Society website, includes an ongoing commitment to the collection and publication of data and scholarship regarding relevant aspects of American history. The second is the continued management and expansion of artifacts housed in the SGS visual archives.
The website is presented in an academic, encyclopedic, yet subversive manner that supports thoughtful questions regarding contemporary cultural or historical analysis, while critiquing unexamined signifiers of faction and sloganeering disguised as legitimate information.